It's beginning to look a lot like December in here!

I have a very hard time containing my excitement once we get to December! Tomorrow is it... the beginning of one of the best months in the year!! It is also THAT time of the year again when we have advent calendars. I made 2 this year since Lisa is living with us for a bit :) It's fun and challenging to find ideas for 2 completely different tastes and age ranges!!




This year I made boxes and bags and glued them to a white canvas. I glued them around randomly one evening and the next, I put the numbers on them, so even *I* don't remember what is in the boxes! Maelie is very excited that it is time for the calendar again :)

It's probably the only month other than the summer months where I don't have to work hard to wake her up in the morning!

Watch for my annual Christmas countdown where I post every day this month until Christmas!

Feed me, please!

Peluche returned to his house last night, but not before a begging session!



"pleeeeeeeeease feed me!!"

not an early bird

This is the look I get from Peluche when I wake up too early for him:



This is how he ends up.... just rolls over and goes back to bed!

Christmas cookies

Every year we HAVE to get a pack of the Christmas Pillsbury cookies. Maelie did not have faith in me because every year, even following the instructions, they burned!! So this year I was determined to have them come out just right!



Peluche LOVES to help us in the kitchen! He is the floor manager.



Maelie loved the way they turned out this year!

What a surprise!

On Thursday while at work, I received an e-mail from Kath saying she would be in town!! Not for long though, just in passing... so all the stars and snowflakes aligned and I was able to leave work and go for lunch with her and her little family! It had been about 2 years since we saw each other! It felt like we'd seen each other yesterday. Some friendships are like that :) Very comfortable!

I couldn't believe how much older and mature her kids were. Nathan is quite talkative for his age!!

Thanks for letting me know you were in town Kath! I would have done everything in my power to see you guys no matter what!

Maelie's speech

This year was Maelie's first year at public speaking! She placed in the first three in her class so she had to go in front of the school & parents & judges! Her topic was "The price you pay for perfect teeth". You can probably guess that it was about the orthodontic treatments she is receiving :)



She did it perfectly! I was amazed! There were 3 winnders, and 2 honorable mentions. Maelie got the first honorable mention! I was SO proud!! (too bad on the pic she looks like she is fifth, but she is actually 4th). She was a bit hard on herself for not having won first place, but I was SOOOOOO proud of all the work she did! Even her teacher commented that she should have been in the first 3. :)



She is just starting public speaking... there are many more years of it to go!!

This and that

We are in full prep mode for Christmas now. Our home is becoming more and more cheery....LOL ok, maybe Maelie and I are getting more excited. Pictured above are my new curtains in the main floor washroom. Beautiful cardinals! I can keep these up all winter, not just Christmas. My kitchen curtains are snowflakes, my main door ones are snowmen, so they can also stay up all winter.I put up my snowman shower curtains that Kathleen had got me as a gift years ago! It feels wintery in here! We are just missing some snow!

Maelie really enjoys sitting by the tree and organizing the Little People reindeer and Santa. Even if she knows the true story now, she still sees her Santa and reindeer set as a tradition now :) She has also started keeping count of the activity presents. Each year, I put a bunch of activity presents under the tree. They can me teeny tiny activities or a bit more time consuming activities, but the thing it, we do the activity together, so it's fun! Even if it is just 5 minutes in our day! I told Maelie we would start them up on December 1st, and not earlier, so she is very excited. We had a few left from last year, and we have a few new ones this year. We certainly don't open one up every day... when Maelie has a busy schedule we skip a day.



Recently, Maelie started her orthodontic treatments. She had a palatal expander which basically is put directly on her palate and we must roll the little wheel in the middle to expand the mechanism every other day. This will allow her palate to get bigger. Right now she doesn't even have enough room for her baby teeth! Let alone her grown up ones! After about 6 months or so, she will need some other thing (name unknown!) to keep her palate widened as her grown up teeth keep on coming in. Once they are all out, she will get braces to try and get all the teeth in their right spots. This will for sure be quite a long treatment! But I am sure it will pay off in the long run since Maelie has teeth that are in quite weird places at the moment! LOL



On another note, Maelie just got her report card! This is probably the first one in her schooling career that actually makes sense!! The Ministry of Education modified their report cards so that we could get an accurate picture of our kids' grades. Here is what Maelie got this term:

English 86
French 90
Math 96
Science 82
Geography, history and citizenship 86
Music 89
Visual arts 85
Ethics and religious culture 85
Phys ed 80

Needless to say we are really proud of her!

Maelie will also be sharing her speech in front of the school, judges and parents tomorrow! Three kids from each grade were chosen to share their speech. I can't wait to see her do it in front of so many people!! :) It brings back so many memories from my younger days.... how much we hated speeches! LOL Good luck Maelie!

Combo tournament

Maelie had a tournament today. It was the Combo tournament where the teams were one Bantam, one Junior and one Senior per team. This is the only tournament where they can move kids up in levels to form more teams. Maelie ended up being the Junior on the team. The junior girl ended up being the senior. The three girls played well and above their average (which was what counted)



Maelie's team won first place! They will be in the Combo regionals early Decmber. Way to go girls!!

Let us Remember

Friday was Remembrance Day. IMaelie had a Remembrance Day assembly at school. Her class was singing "Let me be a child of peace..." so of course I attended.



After the minute of slience, the kids went up on stage from each grade and taped their wreaths made with hands of poppies. One child just lost his great grandpa a month ago. This great-grandpa had fought in WW2. His mom had printed a picture of him to bring to the ceremony. Maelie's classmate was so proud to hang it up on the wall so we could remember him and his service as well. He has a smile when he came down from the stage.



It was quite touching to see them hang up their wreaths. My heart is always very sensitive when I think of all the servicemen and servicewomen who gave their lives in the war, and other missions, to help us live a better life. Who knows what would have happened if they didn't do what they did!



Every time I hear of a fallen soldier, it breaks my heart for their loved ones. They never get to say goodbye, never get one last hug. When I see a veteran, I can't help but feel some sadness for them as they probably had to leave some of their friends behind when they returned home.



Maelie decided to pose beside their class wreath.



Here is Maelie with Major Lemyre. To us, he is a friend, but to Canada, he is a serviceman, a hero! Thank you for your service !



I really hope you had a chance to remember on 11/11/11. I know we did.

It's up and i LOVE it!

Maelie was begging for us to put up the tree. Like me, she love the feelings you get before Christmas. For Maelie it is mostly the anticipation of the whole holiday season!



Yes a lot of people find us crazy, but this is how we are, this is what we love! We love to be excited about every little thing. It brings joy to our lives!



I love the way that we are spontaneous. That we just go with the flow and just enjoy it! We are not promised tomorrow... so let's enjoy it today!



Cheers! Here's to the beginning of another festive season!!

Pumpkin Carving in the workplace

Here is my last post about Halloween this year!

We had 6 teams participate this year in our 2nd annual Halloween pumpkin carving contest this year. It's amazing how crazy it got ! I would have loved to see a lot of them in the dark. This room did not do some of them justice! I already booked a room for next year and it has now windows....








I love how everyone was so into it!

Here is the treat table we had for everyone who dropped in





I'm glad that it had a great turn out!! Now we have to prep for Christmas!

Happy Halloween!

Sunday evening, Maelie mentioned that we had not prepared the bags for the trick or treaters yet. So we spread out on the table and filled 75 bags up. We had extra candy on the side in case we had more than 75 kids. Maelie was not feeling too good all day Sunday.



We barely slept Sunday night, Maelie was complaining of aches and pains, and by Monday morning, she had a fever. Poor Maelie had to stay home from school on Halloween! We kept the fever down by alternating advil and tylenol. By the time I got home from work, she was all ready to carve pumpkins. How did I teach her to carve a pumpkin? Here's a knife, make a hole in the pumpkin the way you want it to look. And don't get upset if it doesn't turn out exactly as planned. That's normal!



So she worked and worked and it turns out she was ecstatic with her pumpkins!



Lisa also had a whole plan in mind, she worked really hard. Now I don't even remember what it was exactly, however, a Dr. Who fan would know right away! (it's the one on the right attacking Maelie's pumpkin on the left )



Maelie didn't want to dress up as a zombie since she was still not 100%, so I told her to just put her witch costume on. Simple and easy.



She trick or treated at our immediate neighbors houses (5 of them). This particular house had a projector displaying things in their window! It was awesome!



It was warm enough at the beginning to sit outside for a bit. Maelie handed out the candy to the kids. We didn't get as many little kids as I would have hoped. We did however get a lot of teenagers that were taller than me.



By 7:15, Maelie was begging me to shut down so we could go to bed! We stayed open til 7:45 and then moved the pumpkins closer to our house so they wouldn't be thrown on the road during the night like the fate of some pumpkins on our street last year!

All in all it was a good day! Now to recuperate on all the lost sleep in the past weeks!!